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SECRET GRAFFITI WARS IN LONDON

Bearded line-drawing geeks went head-to-head with slick freestyle graffiti artists at Village Underground, east London, last night.

Two teams of five artists were given an hour and a half in which to cover their half of a huge white board in Cuba-themed graffiti. They had pens and paints at their disposal, but no aerosol cans.

Team one, Intercity, were dressed in white overalls, and spent the first 10 minutes using a piece of crayon on a string to mark out three circles, which they filled in to make one red and one smaller gold ring. They then spent the rest of their time doodling all over it.

One of the Intercity boys said to me as he looked up at the board: “I’m used to working on A4… this is a bit bigger.”

Team two, Monorex, split off as soon as the timer started. Pen to paper, they drew quickly and confidently: Big, bold outlines. Straight away, it began to look like graffiti you would see on trains in Naples or New York. They worked in from the corners and, after a while, a scene began to take shape.

At first, I was behind Monorex all the way. They knew exactly what they were doing, and they did it with style. But slowly, Intercity’s charm won me over. Their doodles strongly resembled Glaswegian artist David Shrigley’s. Dotted all over the place were little quips, like “Banksy is my mum,” and, “Don’t tell them how 1990’s graffiti is”.

Plus they made the crowd move back at the end so they could throw paint balloons at their finished designs. They didn’t win, but they certainly got the most laughs and made the most amount of mess. And that’s got to count for something, doesn’t it?

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